6 countries, hundreds of IT contracting opportunities - Viewpoint Viewpoint careers advice blog

6 countries, hundreds of IT contracting opportunities - Viewpoint Now you’ve considered the key questions around contracting and looked at what you’ll need to do to set-up on your own, you might be wondering where your first project is going to come from. For many, working with a recruitment consultant helps to keep them abreast of developments in the job market and saves them the difficult and time consuming task of finding companies recruiting for their role/skills at the right moment. At Hays we are differentiated from other IT recruitment companies by our huge international setup, which means we have strong relationships with multi-national employers and access to the best projects in the industry. That’s why many of the top contractors from around the world choose to work with us. To back up my claim I have asked some of our European consultants to highlight the key clients they are working with at the moment and the roles they are recruiting for, providing a wider insight into current market trends. So for the third part of this ITC Made Simple blog series I’m going to defer to my colleagues, who are going to give you an insight into the opportunities available to you now. Here’s what’s going on in some of our key markets in Europe: 1. Poland Over the years Polish developers have built a strong reputation for themselves internationally. You can find Polish developers working in the UK, Germany, US, Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries (an upward trend over the last two years). Many international companies are also investing their RD budgets into Poland because of the technical, language (English but also increasingly German) and business skills of the workforce. As a result, Polish developers are in high demand and international companies will often offer students international internships in their first or second year of study in order to secure their services when they graduate. A multinational consumer goods company has recently opened an IT innovation centre in Warsaw to work on their most cutting edge projects and applications. They currently have a team of developers writing an app for iOS and android and we have supplied them with UX/UI contractors to work on the interface. The purpose of the app is to help the client launch one of their products into China for the first time and this is a unique opportunity for our contractors to participate in such a large scale project. Adding this project to their portfolio will open doors for them to the international market and after meeting them onsite recently I can tell you that they are all very excited about the opportunity. See what roles we currently have available via Hays Poland here. 2. Czech Republic The greatest concentration of contractors in the Czech Republic is in Prague and Brno. In the regions, the range of IT services on offer is limited to a certain extent, and costs are increased by money needed for relocation or commuting. Contractors’ willingness to relocate within the Czech Republic is relatively low, however, using a home office is an alternative. The technologies currently most in demand on the job market include Java, .NET, PHP, C++ and mobile apps. By contrast, there is declining demand for Python, C, Flex, Delphi, SAP and Perl. With regard to Hays projects, we have a strong relationship with a global telecoms company and we are currently supplying them with Java developers. As well as working on an existing web application to do some minor UI tweaks and functionality extensions on existing code, we are also working on a new system for them. This new system will be a replacement for an existing zoo of batch scripts. It consists of two separate parts: a web interface for manual data processing and the batch application itself. The frameworks used include spring, spring batch and spring integration for the batch part of the app and Primefaces/JSF2 for the web part. Apache commons is used for everything else and Java 8 is the programming language for the project. If you’re a Java developer looking to work with cutting edge technology this would be the project for you. See what roles we currently have available via Hays Czech Republic here. 3. The Netherlands The big news in The Netherlands IT Contracting market is the new DBA regulation which came into effect in May 2016. This cracked down on companies hiring people on a contractor basis (meaning they did not have to pay labour taxes to the government) but treating them as a de facto perm employee. This has naturally created some nervousness to hire from companies as they don’t want to be caught out by the new regulations. However, the IT Contracting market in The Netherlands is still a vibrant one and we are still seeing exciting projects come through the door. A major client of ours is a global semiconductor manufacturing company with whom we have a MSP to provide their contractors. We provide them with a number of Linux developers, which the company’s infrastructure systems and restricted security area works on. The engineers that work in this environment are developing their next generation products such as chips that will go into the latest Tesla cars. What sets this company apart is that they are always ready to adapt to new technologies â€" which is unusual in very large organisations. They were the first company to migrate a secure area to the cloud through Amazon Web Services and we found them one of the ten Amazon team members who built the technology originally. With the ability to create custom add-ons and a true expert onboard the possibilities were endless. You know projects must be exciting when we have contractors call to thank us for placing them with the company! See what roles we currently have available via Hays Netherlands here. 4. Luxembourg The ITC market in Luxembourg is principally driven by two sectors Finance (with roughly 45 per cent market share) and the European Public Sector (35 per cent market share). The other 20 per cent is primarily made up of companies from the Telecoms, Energy and Industrial sectors. There are four key trends within the market: 1) Application projects driven by digitization, paperless working and data-management trends (BI and Big-Data) 2) Financial Regulatory projects including banking transformation due to regulation (e.g. Mifid, Fatca, EMIR and Prybs) 3) IT infrastructure outsourcing: Luxembourg is one of top countries for datacenters with powerful players in the market (IBM, EbRC or CSC) and multiple “Tier IV” datacentres   4) Security and risk control consulting focused on control and governance. The ITC market in Luxembourg is relatively immature compared to its larger neighbors but growing liberalisation of the economy is opening up more opportunities for ambitious contractors. Looking to our own experience in the ITC market, a consulting project for a law firm is an interesting assignment we’ve taken on recently. The company was moving buildings and the CIO had a €5m budget for this project and to change all IT infrastructure including new laptops, PCs, servers etc. He needed assistance with managing this big project and we recruited two consultants to help. The first consultant helped in the project kick-off, doing an audit of the current IT infrastructure and working out what needed to be done. They then created an RFP to go out to the market with and helped the client negotiate with providers. As a result €2m was saved on the budget. We then hired a second consultant to manage the project itself. This was an unusual arrangement as our end fee was linked to the savings we helped the client to get. The client completed the project to time, cost and spec so needless to say we felt the benefit as well! See what roles we currently have available by Hays Luxembourg here. 5. Denmark From a recruitment perspective, in the IT contracting market in Denmark we have seen a growth in the number of candidates with an international profile. Danish companies (especially large corporations) are now more willing to look outside of the country to find the specialists they need to complete their high priority projects. We have seen this particularly with regard to senior SAP roles where companies have been willing to swallow the costs of relocation packages etc. to secure talent that is in high-demand globally. This is illustrated in a recent project with one of our key clients. A year ago we had zero contractors at this global manufacturer now we are working with them as a trusted advisor on their technology projects. Initially they called us to find a Program Manager for a massive project with a team of over 250 people â€" we placed the perfect candidate within a week! The project in question, focused on setting-up a new BI platform for the company with a holistic view of their data, had been going on for three years and was stalling due its size and complexity. The incoming Program Manager restructured the program and switched up the resources â€" we also helped to find some new people to help flesh out the project. Having only completed one-third of the project in three years, the revamped team completed a further two-thirds within one year, and the project is due to be completed very shortly. Because we, and of course our contractors, were able to deliver we are now working with the client on a strategic level and helping to staff their upcoming projects a perfect win-win situation. Typical roles recruited for included SAP BI/BW/BO Consultants, Project Managers, Scrum Master BI Environment and SAP Audit Consultants for the BW Landscape. We really had to utilize our international network to identify the right people and a lot of the consultants came from the UK, Germany and Poland. Our strong relationships with our contractors also helped as they were able to recommend colleagues from previous projects and advised them to work with us. Our international reach is a competitive advantage of ours as we can guarantee to clients that we’ll find them the right people and we can offer our contractors a wide range of exciting projects. See what roles we currently have available via Hays Denmark here. 6. Italy The IT Contracting market in Italy is mainly concentrated in the north, particularly Milan, but Rome also offers interesting opportunities. Although the market is not as developed as some northern neighbours such as Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands, there are still plenty of meaty projects for Italian contractors to cut their teeth on. Java and .NET developers are always in high demand and there is also strong demand for contractors with experience in web and front-end technologies like PHP, JavaScript, AngularJS, HTML5 and CSS. We have seen a number of client projects at Hays looking at building dynamic web applications. Working with a famous business directory, we have supplied them with Senior Web Developers, Mobile Developers (iOS and Android) and Java Experts to work on their IT projects. The most interesting project at the company was creating a service similar to Google Maps but focused on businesses. The Java guys were involved in building the algorithm to find the best routes between starting locations and local companies etc. The application was also developed for mobile devices and our iOS and Android Developers have contributed to the creation of the whole mobile architecture definitely a great project to have on your CV. See what roles we currently have available via Hays Italy here. How should you manage yourself when actually on site with a client organisation after winning a contract? That’s what I’ll be discussing next time in my ITC Made Simple blog. But for now I wish you all the best in your project hunt! Hopefully you found this blog useful. If you did, then here are some other IT blogs you will enjoy: 3 necessary steps to becoming an IT contractor 3 questions Im always asked about IT Contracting Theres no such thing as a digital expert 2016: The year of the digital diviners Data is the new currency of recruitment The fruits of knowledge One thing is clear about digital transformation Watch this video to find out how Hays can help you find your next IT contract: Share this blog: